The most illuminating reference for me so far was that to Baudrillard’s ‘Simulacra and Simulations‘. After puzzling over the meaning of ‘Elephants Dream’ and drawing a virtual blank; I picked up that reference dropped by Sian on our Tweetdeck.
I had already played with the switching roles in the film; the inherent contradictions and the role reversal of the two characters:master/pupil, leader/led, cautious/carefree and impetuous/reflective. I saw too the journey through randomness or an elaborate labyrinth, the dangers, the desire to interpret chaos all of which manifested themselves in my mind’s eye as a kind of senseless ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ with Dickensian characters.
Then I read the article by Baudrillard and a different perspective took over. I began to travel through our three films from a different, and for me, crucial point of view. At the beginning there came the quote from Ecclesiastes:
‘The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth–it is the truth which conceals that there is none.
The simulacrum is true…’ and ‘…whereas representation tries to absorb simulation by interpreting it as false representation, simulation envelops the whole edifice of representation as itself a simulacrum.’
First of all came the World Builder and fulfilled the first stage, which, according to Baudrillard:
‘…is the reflection of a basic reality.’
I see in the World Builder: illusion and the pursuit of reality (creation tool), sentimentality (longing glances), fleeting glimpses of human reality (longing for the home, hearth and love) and enduring iconic metaphors and images (buildings and the flower).
The first part of the scenes from the Matrix, the choice of the pills, then represents for me Baudrillard’s second phase:
‘It masks and perverts a basic reality.’
We are all destined to choose. The journey is the only given. The choice is between fighting to maintain the status quo or adapting to change.
After the choice has been made in the Matrix, Baudrillard’s third phase comes into being:
‘It masks the absence of a basic reality.’
The nightmare journey has modern demons but they represent our culturally known demons (our Jekyll and Hyde natures, monsters etc.).
Finally, in Baudrillard’s last phase we enter hyperreality – ‘Elephants Dream’
‘…bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum.’
This is why it is so difficult to take in. It is beyond comparison; it reflects and copies nothing. Experience it or leave it be. It is the randomness of ‘is’.
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